poem || Peter Sherburn-Zimmer

This Is What a Poet Makes of his Life

 

I.

 

It is easy to wish for the wind in the field

When the window is closed before the morning begins.

But we are here, and the window is closed, you and I, myself

     And memory, are all that is here and I wonder

 At what pulls me from my thoughts to the kitchen where the water

     Is not running...

 The habit of distraction and afternoon destruction waiting.

 

It is as far away from autobiography as reading another man’s letter

     in the other room

Is from the original thought of his daughter back East, or on her way back East,

In a dark carriage above the Mississippi,

Or the letter I am not writing to you in my mind as I write you a poem.

 

II.

I come from a family in which

The cousins came for an afternoon tea

And cut the legs off the table

To sit on the floor while they drank,

And children painted their shoes green

While the parents were out shopping, or drinking,

Because they wanted green shoes.

 

The truth of the stories is in the truth of the images,

The picture of the kids sitting on the floor,

The bucket of paint, the green sneakers;

The persistence of the story, regardless of whether it happened

     Or not;

The question in my mind of why I’d tell this tale over and over

     In my mind

For sixty years or so, true or not.